Chapter 13: The Test of Time

DAMON

My eyes register only shades of blue gently sifted together, the breeze from the open window touching my hair with kind fingers. It brushes my eyelashes and I remember to blink; the lake comes back into focus, framed by the rough-hewn logs of the kitchen windowsill.

For a young building, Elena's lake house feels surprisingly timeless. But in a good way, like if you let the days of your life spool out here, they would rest quietly without the hint of an echo.

There's someone at the edge of the dock, shoulders hunched beneath the thin grey cotton of his hoodie. I move away from the window, leaving my brother to whatever he sees in the water and the sky of this place. I wonder if he's losing track of time too, the tick of each minute fading into the background until the hum is like a slow exhale that you don't even hear any more.

I'm supposed to be baking. I'm supposed to be seducing Elena, so that Stef and I can have the best fucking fundraiser Mystic Falls has ever seen. I'm never going to get my blank check if I'm busy getting all moony-eyed at the scenery.

I pick up my rolling pin and dust flour across the ball of dough I'm rolling out, a beautiful trap that will bake into buttery, flaky layers that remind me of why I still bother to eat.

From my spot at the counter I can see the girls, curled into the hammock together like sleepy kittens. Their voices ebb and flow in a languid, irregular rhythm as they murmur back and forth, resting in the pauses before they remember to pick up the conversation again.

I'm focusing more on my pastry than their words until Elena's voice catches my attention.

"I just wish we had more in common. This is the last year, you know? He'll move somewhere and so will I and after this it will just be catching up on the phone and visits." Her head is tilted down so I can't see her face, but her fingers pick anxiously at the fabric of the hammock. "Once we're not living so close together, what will we even have to say? He's not really a talker anyway."

I lift my chin so I can peek through the sliding glass door. I wish she'd stop worrying so much about her brother. When we went to visit colleges she spent the whole time cycling between feigned enthusiasm and dejection while Jeremy shot me pained looks and I wished I were in a dark, quiet bar where no one talked about GPAs or GGRs or RAs or STDs.

The only part that didn't leave me wishing I were knee-deep in bourbon was the end of the last campus tour. Elena was fussing about different meal plans and I tossed Jeremy my phone, opened to a search window for bachelor's degree certificates in every conceivable field of study for $39.99 plus shipping.

He laughed, Elena glared, and I told him he should just stay home and get athlete's foot and herpes for free. Which was not, I might add, an interpretation of the higher education experience that my girlfriend appreciated me passing on to her younger sibling.

"It's not like you're strangers, Elena," Caroline says. "You and Jeremy have a way better relationship than most people have with their little brothers. Besides, he's seventeen. What does he even do, outside of X-box games and looking at the same five sticky Playboys?" She shudders. "Just…ew, Elena. Wait until he grows into a hobby or two before you worry that you guys don't have anything in common."

Elena swats at her friend's feet. "I just don't want to be like that lame aunt that you have to visit twice a year whether you like it or not. I want us to…" She sighs. "Have fun together. Hang out when somebody's not trying to kill us."

"You're not lame, Elena," Caroline says. "But he's a boy. They do, you know, boy stuff. He and Damon work on cars and hunt vampires together and all. I bet they'll still do that when he's in college. Jeremy's not going to be a twice-a-year visit kind of brother, ever."

"I know he likes Damon," Elena whispers sullenly. "I guess if he comes to visit my boyfriend that'll have to be enough."

I turn away from the window to hide my smile. It's too rich, the girl that everyone loves best pouting because her brother and I occasionally pull a long weekend of fanged-douchebag cleanup together.

Thick, weather-beaten boards creak as Stefan comes back down the dock. He doesn't come in the back door to join me, so he must have heard the girls on the porch. He props a shoulder against the frame of the sliding glass doors next to their hammock and his eyes smile even though his face stays solemn.

I pour a bowl of cherries into a colander and run water over them, keeping an eye on my family while I do it. Caroline does a decent job of keeping the other two out of the razorblades but the Jeremy thing has been bothering Elena all year. I think the empty-nesting has her thinking about all the kids she won't have and that's something we can't distract her from. Especially since I suspect Caroline has the same problem.

"Elena thinks Jeremy is going to ditch her once he leaves for college because they have nothing in common," Caroline informs her fiancée. "Tell her she's being crazy."

"Wow, way to keep a secret, Care." Elena pokes her with one bare foot.

"It's not about having the same interests, Elena," Stefan says, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. "Hobbies get old and go out of style. He's your family. He shares your memories. He knew you before anyone else did and he'll forgive you when no one else will."

I turn my back on the patio door and start checking the cabinets for a bin of sugar, glad I'm skipping out on this painfully ironic little bonding session. Stefan giving Elena lessons on the importance of family? Guess somebody forgot all the decades of the silent treatment we gave each other. In between me making his life a living hell and him blaming me for his killing sprees, of course.

Guess I just needed my brother, he'd told me once. To what? Come around every few decades and share a drink or two that usually degenerated into a bar fight? To stalk his misguided military service? To kill off a coven of tomb vampires who were torturing him? Or, I know, maybe to tell him he was dating the wrong person and then demonstrate the point by stealing his girlfriend?

Maybe he's forgotten that we've always been there for each other, but not necessarily in a good way.

"When you live as long as we do, that is what's important," Stefan tells Elena.

"Oh, Stefan…"

There's a creak from the hammock, which means there's probably lots of hugging and Kumbaya'ing going on out there on the porch. I hear the hint of a quick sniffle, which was likely from Blonde and Bossy, and I have to stifle a curse. I'm gonna kiss my blank check goodbye forever if she starts bawling about the horrors of being an only child and Stefan has to spend all weekend comforting her.

As if she wouldn't have dug a shallow grave for any clothes-snatching sister she might have had.

I give Stefan an extra minute to get his hands off my girl before I turn around and catch his eye through the glass. He just regards me quietly, even though he damn well knows I heard every word of that.

Want to be a good brother? Get the hell to work then, why don't you?

I nod at the hammock and flare my eyes at him. His face softens into the ghost of a knowing smile.

"I think Damon's calling you," he tells Elena.

Her dark head pops up over the edge of the hammock and I busy myself bringing a cutting board to the table.

"Sorry, I didn't hear." She rolls out of the hammock and letting herself inside.

Behind her, Stefan offers his hand to Caroline and pulls her to her feet. He snuggles an arm around her waist, steers her back up the dock and there's no sound of sniffling whatsoever.

Much better.

"Hey." Elena closes the door behind her. "What's up?"

"Time to start earning your keep, Gilbert," I say. "Fun time's over."

She smiles and steps close to me, trailing a finger down my chest. "Is this another version of the Elena relay?"

I raise an eyebrow, which is about all the communication I'm capable of when her finger sneaks inside my shirt and rests on top of the button of my jeans.

"You know, when Stefan and Caroline say all the right things and then you take over and distract me until I forget what I was worried about in the first place?"

I step close enough that her breasts brush my chest and I can feel that she's wearing a lacy bra today instead of one of the satin ones.

"As always…" I duck my head and breathe the words over her lips. "You give me way too much credit." I smooth my bottom lip against hers, feeling her breath flutter against the tiny hairs of the five o'clock shadow that I'm letting grow for the weekend.

She melts a little bit against my chest, and I swallow and turn her toward the table before I forget all about blank checks and wicked brilliant fundraising ideas.

"This is all about me and Caroline not getting stuck doing all the cooking for the next century or so." I pull out a chair at the table in front of the cutting board and she drops into it with a tolerant smile.

"Okay, what would you like me to do?"

"Pit cherries."

She looks suspicious.

I smile. "It's the beginners level baking class."

"What are you going to do?"

"Be moral support." I slide my hands over her shoulders and begin a gentle massage. A weekend at the lake house should leave her lazy and supple, but her neck and shoulders are as tightly strung as always. I dig my thumbs in, slowly working out the knots for her.

She gives a happy little sigh. "I hope you need a lot of cherries pitted. Because I think I need a lot of moral support."

"Oh, I do." I work my way up the smooth column of her neck. "About half a truckload of them."

I'll make ten pies if I have to. It's a ploy, of course. Cherries are a very delicate fruit and to do it right, she'll have to focus all her awareness into her skin, which will make her sensitive all over. And that can only help in getting her to seduce me into losing our bet.

She picks up a paring knife and makes a slit all the way around a cherry and then pulls it apart to take out the pit, leaving nothing but deep red mush.

I make a horrified sound. "It's not a smoothy, Elena. What are you doing?"

She cranes her head back to look at me. "If I do it wrong, do I lose shoulder rub privileges?"

"Absolutely," I tell her sternly and her face falls. "You've got to go easy on them, they're fragile."

She turns around and butchers three more cherries with great concentration while I smirk and pretend to be surprised.

"Look, do you remember when I taught you to use your hearing? It's like that. Focus on your fingertips. If you try, you can sense the skin of each cherry, the exact resistance of the fruit." I bend down and drop my voice so it whispers against her ear. I can hear her breathing change, and I hold back a smile. "Now hold it very, very gently and twist so it disengages from the pit."

She tries it, and this time she ends up with two neat halves of a cherry.

"Good." I brush my thumb down the nape of her neck and watch gooseflesh appear in my wake. I catch a hint of vanilla on the air as her skin warms and the denim of my jeans suddenly feels scratchy and harsh. "It's the way I used to touch you when you were human. Just a moment of inattention and you'd break."

She keeps working on the cherries but her fingers have just the hint of a tremor to them now. This bet isn't really fair at all. I have been calibrating my voice and touch to every hitch in her breathing and leap of her heart for as long as I've known her. I could see my effect on her from the first day and I've always used the hell out of it.

I had to, because it let me feel smug instead of empty every time she glared at me or slammed a door in my face. Because I knew all I'd have to do was stand a little too close and listen to her heart make a liar out of her.

Her body loved me long before Elena did.

It used to hurt, her reaction to me. I'd get a bittersweet squeeze in the base of my throat when her eyes would dilate and go to my lips before she glanced away, crossing her arms over her chest to hide the peaks of her nipples. Sometimes, I thought it might be more cruel than simple rejection, because I knew the parts of me she wanted had everything to do with pretty genes and nothing at all to do with me.

Now, I nuzzle my hands into her hair and let the heavy strands slowly pour through my fingers. Elena shivers and her paring knife goes still, so I do it again, lifting her hair and letting it stroke my skin as it falls back into place.

She tilts her head back so it rests against my stomach and smiles up at me, brown eyes sleepy and pleased. "That feels good."

I can see the slow blood rising to the surface of her pale skin that tells me if I bent to her lips at this second she would forfeit that bet without hesitation. And I smile with just a hint of triumph, because all my old tricks still work, but now it doesn't hurt at all. Now when her eyes find me, they linger and warm and it soothes away that tight spot in my throat as if it never existed.

"Yeah," I agree. "It feels amazing."